DETROIT — July 21, 2023, was the most important moviegoing date in ages, and the reverberations from that day — when "Barbie" and "Oppenheimer" opened in theaters — lead into Sunday's Academy Awards, where the two movies are up for a combined 21 awards.

As for head-to-head competition, it won't be much of a contest. "Oppenheimer" is so heavily favored to take home Best Picture that it would be a seismic shocker if it doesn't win, and it's also primed to collect statues for Best Actor (for Cillian Murphy), Best Supporting Actor (for Robert Downey Jr.) Best Director (for Christopher Nolan) and several below-the-line categories as well.

"Barbie" won't go home empty-handed, and is likely to pick up a Best Song Oscar for "What Was I Made For?" by Billie Eilish, and will be competitive in several other categories as well, including the costume and production design fields.

But beyond the Oscars, "Barbenheimer" was a true-blue cultural phenomenon. It spoke volumes about Hollywood, the current state of moviegoing culture and the future of the business.

There are many lessons that were learned, or at least should have been learned, from "Barbenheimer." Here are 10 of them:

—Double features can work

For years, studios have staked out release dates years in advance, claiming their territory on the moviegoing calendar and sending a message to competitors: back off, this is our date! For the most part, head-to-head competition between tentpoles is avoided, because there's too much, financially, at stake.

In the case of "Barbenheimer," neither Warner Bros. or Universal balked on July 21, and the strange dichotomy of the two films — polar opposite projects, at least on paper — created increased interest in both movies, and they fed off each other and became inexorably tied to one another in the public consciousness.

Rather than cannibalizing each other's audiences, they worked in tandem, and fans scheduled double features to see both movies, either back-to-back or within a couple of days of each other. They were not just an opening weekend phenomenon, with "Barbie" earning $162 million and "Oppenheimer" taking in $82 million, combining for the fourth-biggest box office weekend in history.

But they stayed in the Top 10 together for 10 weeks, and eventually earned a combined $2.4 billion worldwide. "Oppenheimer" was an early beneficiary of "Barbie" buzz, but the two films worked across the aisle to become the moviegoing event of the decade thus far. They were better together.

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